Thursday, September 27, 2007

Hope harder, you bastards!

I see Harry's Place have recruited another dozen new bloggers; surely at some point they will need to hire a dedicated human resources department. Standing out for me is this piece of dispiriting crap which epitomises that Tinkerbell tendency of the Decent Left which I hoped had been beaten out of them:

A few weeks back I was discussing the consequences of the surge with a couple of anti-war Eustonites. One in particular was disturbed to find his beliefs in solidarity with everyday Iraqis better represented by neo-conservative writers than those on the left

A note in passing. This is kind of like saying "A few weeks back I was talking to Bill Oddie and he mentioned that he was keen on birdwatching". Yes, no shit sherlock. Note from the next paragraph that this unnamed Eustonaut is "anti-war" in the sense that he supports continuing US military occupation of Iraq and was in favour of the escalation of the US military presence earlier in the year. In this sense, I supposed, I am "anti-cheese-sandwiches", because I like them and want more of them.

, illustrating his frustration at current Democrat "cut-and-run" policy with the example of a presidential hopeful essentially calling General Petraeus a liar. His despair at Democrat foreign policy being dictated more by short-term political gain than a sense of responsibility to the people of Iraq made for uncomfortable listening.

Ahhh the siren song of Decency. If things are getting worse rather than better in Iraq, then General Petraeus is a liar. If General Petraeus is a liar, then how on earth can it be a display of "responsibility" or "solidarity" with the people of Iraq to not call him on it? Given that things are very bad in Iraq, if somebody is trying to tell the US government that their current strategy is working, and it isn't, then that person's doing something very dangerous and irresponsible to the people of Iraq.

Of course it's the classic Nick Cohen rhetorical move; to define anything except "stay the course" as de facto anti-Iraqi. From the point of view of the Decents, to even discuss whether we're making things worse rather than better is evil and irrational. On the basis of no evidence at all. They still from time to time try to pretend that the Johns Hopkins/Lancet team, whose one and only priority was to measure the scale of the disaster in Iraq in the hope that something might be done, were not on the side of the Iraqis.

I like to pretend, if only for the sake of continued hope in the future of democracy, that views like this are only typical of the more moronic element of modern Decency, and that there are more sensible Decent arguments about the future of the democracy-building project. But really, are there?